


Red Wings

by writer_zo



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, High School AU, Lesbian Character, cryptid AU, cryptid!Carmen Sandiego, this is all wish fulfillment. this is my house and my domain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writer_zo/pseuds/writer_zo
Summary: Julia Argent is a high school sophomore and amateur investigator whose latest quiet obsession is the possible existence of a mysterious and mischievous cryptid referred to as the Crimson Ghost. With the help of another (significantly more unhinged) student, Chase Devineaux, and her amnesiac friend, Graham, she'll find the Crimson Ghost--and, er, maybe accidentally fall in love with her? Don't tell Devineaux that last part.
Relationships: Julia "Jules" Argent/Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep
Comments: 42
Kudos: 192





	1. The Crimson Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I went crazy and went stupid... this story is 100% wish fulfillment and I love my girls so much

Julia watched Chase Devineaux as he scrawled something in a black binder, hunched over, his untouched grilled cheese steaming on the plate beside him. She bit the inside of her cheek and drummed the fingers of one hand on the table, considering it--“ _ it” _ being just going over there and admitting that she knew what he knew, which sounded so easy in concept and so impossible when she considered it for longer than a moment.

“Yeah, no.” Ivy answered her unspoken question with a raised eyebrow. She stabbed a fork into a pea and twirled it in her hand. “Seriously, Julia, I wouldn’t try it. That guy is ten kinds of crazy.”

“Well, he’s not stupid,” Julia said, pressing the bridge of her glasses higher on her nose. She looked down at the closed notebook in her lap, the careful silver sharpie that read “FIELD NOTES” and nothing else. “I’ve seen his work in some of my APs--Psychology, Statistics. If he and I share the same theories, I should speak with him.”

“ _ Don’t _ ,” Ivy said. She leaned forward, arms folded in front of her chest, copper-red hair bobbing as she shook her head. “Listen to me, okay? You don’t want to touch this with a ten foot pole. If you want me to drive out there with you and prove that there’s nothing in those woods, I will.”

“This is why I want to talk to him,” Julia said. Her brow furrowed, and she pursed her lips as she tucked her notebook under an arm. “You two don’t believe me.”

“But that doesn’t mean you should-- _ ugh _ , Zack, help me out!” Ivy said. She jabbed her brother with an arm, and he yelped as he nearly fell from his stool--his feet were balanced precariously on the edge of the lunch table as he tossed peas into the air to catch them in his mouth.

“Don’t look at me, Ives,” he said, with a shrug. “I think she should go over there, actually. Ten seconds and she’ll get why we warned her. What’s the big deal?”

“Thanks,” Ivy said, her glower bouncing off of her brother’s returning smile of challenge. “Really love having you in my corner, bro.”

Julia stood up, suddenly enough that the two snapped to look at her--it was almost comic, how their mannerisms mimicked each other. She ran a hand through her hair, feeling the ends ruffle through her fingers, and tugged at the edge of her blouse. 

“Well, that’s two votes for me to compare notes with him,” she said, giving Zack a sharp nod of thanks. “By the rules of democracy, we’ve reached a decision.”

“Julia, for the love of god,  _ don’t _ ,” Ivy says, pressing a finger to her temple. “I swear that man is a… a brain virus, or something? Like, being near him makes me feel like a rabid dog. I want to bite things when he speaks.”

“Noted. I’ll see you next period,” Julia said, giving Ivy a sheepish smile over her shoulder as she turned toward Chase.

“Julia, wait-- _ Zack, you dumbass _ ,” Ivy hissed, cuffing him on the shoulder. The two began to converse in a quick, bullet-train whisper that only they seemed to be able to pull off--Julia wouldn’t be able to make out what they were saying if she tried. She swallowed to clear her head and her throat and walked the thirty paces to Chase’s table, sitting down in the stool in front of him and waiting to be addressed.

He did not address her. He continued scrawling for another thirty seconds, and she sat stiff-backed, watching him go, feeling very silly. For one moment, his eyes flicked up to look at her, and then they were back on the page, scratching out a drawing that Julia couldn’t quite make out.

Julia almost began to speak when his head abruptly shot up. He looked at her as though she were asking him something he didn’t know the answer to--narrowed eyes, furrowed brow, tilted head, open mouth. Her voice died as he squinted at her for a long, unbroken moment.  _ Maybe Ivy was right. I don’t think I want to be here. _

“You are… _new_ ,” he said. “Who are you and why are you here?”  
Julia blinked. He had a thick French accent, which, she supposed, made sense--he was a transfer, and his surname matched his apparent origin. 

She still hadn’t been expecting it from someone like him, with his wild, cork-brown hair and prematurely developing facial hair that scattered down his chin as though he’d been flicked with a paint brush. She’d always thought of French as… posh, refined, for art galleries and wine tastings and other things of that sort. Not for, well, conspiracy theorist pariahs with coffee stains somehow on both sleeves.

“I’m, er--” she inhaled, recovering her composure, pressing her lips together to keep her expression flat. “Julia Argent, sophomore. I’ve heard about your theories, Chase.”

“Are you with the paper?” he asked, slowly drawing his notebook toward him. “I’ve been profiled by them already. And  _ not _ sympathetically. If you’re here to mock me--”

“No!” she said, perhaps too quickly. He raised one eyebrow.

“No,” she continued, slowly pulling her notebook from under her arm. “I don’t mean to… make fun of you, Devineaux. In fact, I… I may have some evidence that would lend credibility to your theories.”

Chase blinked. He set his pen down, slowly--the back of it was chewed, Julia noticed, almost into nothingness. He put his elbows on the table and his face in his hands, exhaling audibly and slowly. Julia fidgeted, leaning back from the table. She could feel Ivy’s gaze on her back, telling her  _ I was right, Julie, I was SO right, get out while you still can _ .

“Are you okay--?” 

She wasn’t able to finish before he suddenly tore his hands away from his eyes, leaning back and inhaling as though he’d just been released from a chokehold. His face was flushed with--well, she couldn’t quite tell what emotion it was, but  _ vindication _ couldn’t be too far away from it.  _ Was he just crying? _

“Finally,” he said, a half-cocked grin on his face. “Finally! I knew I could only go unheard for so long. I would have preferred an FBI agent, but you will do, Ms. Argent.”

“An… an FBI agent? For what?”

“For a partner.” Chase said it simply, with a little flicker of irritation, as though it should have been obvious. “A partner in the hunt for the scourge of these woods.”

“You want to  _ hunt _ the Crimson Ghost?”

“Of course I want to hunt  _ la Femme Rouge! _ ” Chase said, loudly, throwing his hands into the air.

Julia felt her cheeks tinge in embarrassment as a few people in the room turned to her--she could see her lab partner, Zari, at a table to the side, looking at the two of them with a stare that could freeze molten lead, and she could see Graham from the Drama Club giving her an amused, sympathetic half-smile. 

“Is everything alright, Mr. Devineaux?” asked someone behind Julia. Julia shut her eyes and wished for oblivion.  _ Oh, god, not now _ .

Principal Fraser paused at their table, looking between the two of them with some wry interest. She was a tall woman, with mahogany-brown skin and a level expression that seemed tailor-made for a figure of authority.

“It is excellent, Ms. Fraser,” Chase said, striking the table once. His sandwich bounced. “I believe I will soon rid our town of a terrible threat.”

“Ah,” she said, flatly. She looked toward Julia, and a smile turned her lips. “Ms. Argent? You’re helping him with this?”

“I, erm, just wanted to see what he thought about this, I’m not--”

“She is. She is absolutely helping me. She is my partner and we are going to save this town.” Chase stated, crossing his arms in a self-satisfied way that made Julia want to dump his tray into his lap.

“Well,” Fraser said, giving the two of them a slow, panning look, “so long as you aren’t disrupting the lunch room, you can do what you like outside of class. Are we clear?”

“Of course,” Julia said, nodding, hands folded tightly in her lap. 

“Yes, fine,” Chase sighed, sinking lower in his seat. He winced when the principal raised an eyebrow at him, then watched her as she receded, carrying her lunch to the table where the rest of the faculty sat.

“Apologies,” he said, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “I am… passionate about my work.”

“I can tell,” Julia said, voice weak. “Look, I’m happy to let you see the research I’ve done, but I’m not sure I’m in the business of hunting her. I don’t think she’s evil, frankly--”

“Your confidence in her is misplaced,” Chase snapped. She pursed her lips and resolved to ignore those particular remarks.

“I’d just like to compare notes,” she said. She opened her notebook, arranged neatly with its pasted news clippings and violet-pen bullet points, outlining the timeline of strange incidents at the edge of Pine Creek, West Virginia. “I’d like to see what you’ve found that I haven’t.”

“Of course,” he said, eagerly taking her notebook. He peered at it, and she hesitantly took his binder in turn.

It was a wreck. His notes were like a swarm of locusts, crawling up the sides and margins of the page when he ran out of room, mostly shorthand that rivalled the penmanship of a medical doctor in indecipherability. She tabbed through page after page with her finger, feeling the sinking weight of regret in her stomach, before reaching the page he’d been working on, where she stopped, eyes drawn to the sketch on the page.

“What’s this?” she asked, laying his binder on the table. He paused in poring over her notebook, still on the first page, to look at his own work, and smiled, pointing at his handiwork.

“Do you like the art?” he asked, almost childishly proud of his haphazard pen sketch. “I believe it’s accurate, no?”

The sketch was rough, but honestly credible--he’d been hard at work on this for some time, capturing the form of the Crimson Ghost standing contrapposto in the middle of a clearing. She had long hair that spread down her back, flickering around her waist, and she wore what could have been a dress or a coat--Julia couldn’t make it out. Her most notable traits, however, were her wings, broad and sweeping, raised into the air, and the twin ram-like horns that curled from her head in perfect, dark spirals. She was beautiful--almost angelic, ironically, her face fixed in an expression of soft, smiling curiosity.

“You drew this?” Julia asked, tracing it. She looked at him abruptly, tapping it with a finger. “How do you know what she looks like? No one has caught more than a low-quality image of her on camera.”

“That’s easy,” Chase said, face clouding with pride and vengeance. “I’ve seen her with my own eyes.”


	2. Picture Polaroid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chapter about plans, slips of the tongue, and a slow, creeping feeling of deja-vu.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there's anything confusing in this chapter! It's late and my brain is in p a i n. This is a bit of an exposition chapter, but I hope I wrote it enjoyably! PLEASE COMMENT AND KUDOS, it means the world to me!!

The walk to her house from school was quiet, the light between the trees a fragile amber, the wind barely a rattle along the road. Pine Creek was drowsy this time of year, burrowing under blankets of fallen leaves to escape the bite of the coming winter. 

Julia felt anything  _ but  _ tired. Her whole body was buzzing, shivering with the idea of what she was going to do when the sky went dark and her parents slept. She wanted to grab a dial and skip the hours until nightfall, but no such mechanism presented itself, and so she walked home, nerves singing, eyes focused on the road ahead resolutely.

“Julia,” Graham said, face scrunched in discomfort, “you can’t be serious about this.”

“I’m deadly serious,” she said, discreetly trying to keep the armful of research books that Chase had given her from tumbling from her arms. “He’s the first person I’ve met since I moved here who has credible theories surrounding the Crimson Ghost’s existence.”

“You’re  _ going out to the woods _ with him. At night,” Graham said, raising one dark, scar-nicked eyebrow. “Ivy, Zack, you tried to talk her out of this, right?”

“Of course I did! This idiot went and screwed it up.” Ivy raised her arms, exasperated, and jabbed her brother with an elbow. He reeled to the side for a moment, caught off-balance by his sister’s strength. Ivy was strong from summer baseball, the cinnamon dash of freckles on her nose twitching as she stuck her tongue out at her brother.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry!” Zack groaned, rubbing the sore spot on his side, reaching over with a lanky arm to ruffle his sister’s hair. “I didn’t think the two of ‘em would hit it off like that. He’s a freakin’ headcase.”

“I believe I’ve been described in similar terms,” Julia said, tone a bit too sharp. Graham’s mouth pressed into a line, and she bit the inside of her cheek when she saw the concern with which he looked at her, the downward tilt to his eyes.

“Sorry, Julia,” Zack said, scratching the back of his neck. “Didn’t mean it like that. People who say that  _ you’re _ a headcase say it because you’re real smart, and they’re too dumb to get you. But, uh, well,  _ Chase… _ ”

“Chase has totalled eight cars since his sixteenth birthday,” Ivy said, folding her arms.

“ _ What?  _ He’s seventeen now!” Julia said. She stopped in her tracks for a moment before shaking the surprise away and catching up to the twins. “How do you know that?”

“We’re into cars,” Zack said. “Word gets around in a town this small.”

“Oh, it’s not just cars,” Graham said. “I heard about the lake one, and the one where he ran into the fountain in town square.”

“Still want to go hang out in the woods with him?” Ivy said, looking over her shoulder and meeting Julia’s eyes with a note of warning.

“...I’ll think on it,” Julia said. Apprehension was raw at the back of her throat, and she swallowed to send it down. “I’m still probably going.”

“Fine,” Ivy said. Julia almost felt hurt. Ivy was colder than usual--more businesslike, less loud and boisterous and teasing. She almost sounded really annoyed. Julia met Zack’s eyes, and he suddenly looked away, chewing at the inside of his lip.  _ Strange _ .

“Alright, this is where I get off,” Graham sighed, stopping short as he found his street. “Julia, I’m… going to text you. Be ready for it.”

Julia opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he was already off, whistling to himself as he readjusted the strap of his backpack on his shoulder.  _ Stranger still _ . He didn’t look back as he went into his house, and Julia realized almost too late that Ivy and Zack were streets ahead, having left her looking after him, wondering what his hasty parting remark meant.

“Sorry!” Julia said, rushing to catch up with the twins. Zack gave her that same uncomfortable look he’d given earlier--a little sad, a little nervous, a little afraid. They were almost at Julia’s stop, and it relieved her to see her home so close. She’d never felt so on-edge on a beautiful autumn afternoon.

“Bye,” Ivy said, giving her a closed, tight-lipped smile, waving her hand in a way that looked uncomfortably mechanical. “See you tomorrow, Julia!”

“Er… see you, too,” Julia said, wondering why Ivy was... closing, like a morning glory drawing its petals shut as the night came. Ivy kept walking, but Zack paused for a moment, shoulders hunched, fiddling with the hem of his jersey.

“Zack?” Julia said, quietly.

He didn’t look back toward her, but he did straighten his shoulders, lifting his chin and rocking once on his heels. He inhaled, steeling himself.

“Just… don’t hurt the Crimson Ghost, okay? Don’t let Chase hurt her.”

“I… wouldn’t. Why are you asking? I thought you didn’t believe--”

“I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” Zack said. “I-I don’t want anything to happen to you, or Chase, or Carm--the Crimson Ghost. I don’t--”

“Carm?” Julia asked. “Who’s--”

“ _ Zack! _ ” 

Julia and Zack both jumped. Ivy had turned on a heel and was facing Zack, teeth gritted, fists balled at her sides. Her short red hair stirred as the breeze moved it.

“Let’s go. We’ve got work tomorrow.” She didn’t turn around, like she had before--she actually waited for Zack to come to her, facing him, making sure he was with her. He mumbled another goodbye and was gone--the twins receded up their street, and Julia was alone, head hazy as though the pressure in the atmosphere had suddenly changed. 

She walked home in silence, head down, books almost slipping from her hands, and went to her room to complete work that wasn’t due until next week.

She had almost forgotten Graham’s odd parting message until her phone buzzed, humming against the bedsheet like a trapped insect, and she scrambled to check her texts.

FROM: Graham C.

_ tell devineaux that i’m coming with you. _

Julia gasped aloud, then felt silly for doing it in the hollow space of her room, decorated in pale blue curtains and cheap reproductions of Matisse paintings she’d found in a thrift store. It took her a moment to stop scratching at the short, dark crop of her hair to compose a reply.

_ What? Do you believe in the Crimson Ghost? _

_ i don’t know _

_ honestly, probably not _

_ but… you know how i have an old box? _

_ with stuff from before my accident? _

_ Yes. I do. _

_ i just have this one photo _

_ obviously i don’t remember taking it _

_ i mean, it would be really neat if i did _

_ I’m sorry... _

_ don’t apologize for my own idiot move _

_ my childhood memories probably would’ve been really boring _

_ and the accident was totally my bad _

_ Again, have you ever considered therapy? _

_ ha, i’m fine. stop getting me off track, j, i've got something big here _

_ this is the photo. _

Julia almost jumped when the attachment came through, the notification jittering the phone in her fingers. The picture was grainy, a low-light polaroid recaptured on Graham’s phone camera, and it seemed to show a Halloween party by the forest, the kind that teenagers brought their parents’ drinks to. In the photo, his finger, pale in the glare of the flash, was pointing to something on the treeline, and Julia peered as she zoomed in on the spot.

A girl in a red jacket stood at the end of the party. She looked out-of-place, with short auburn hair and skin the soft brown of a maple leaf tumbling from a tree. She wasn’t dressed up, unlike the other teenagers in the photo, who wore dollar-store hockey masks or cat ears or skeletal face-paint in some semblance of a costume. All she had was her strange, long coat, and a wide-brimmed hat that slanted over her eyes. Her lips were parted, and she smiled softly, watching the celebration at a distance.

Julia could barely type a reply to his texts with her shaking fingers.

_ Where? When? _

_ no idea where _

_ but! It was only a year before my accident _

_ right after i moved here _

_ This is consistent with a number of accounts! _

_ The red coat, the wide-brimmed hat to hide the horns… _

_ again! it could be a prank! _

_ someone could have dressed as her for halloween _

_ True… _

_ but… _

_ But? _

_...when’s chase picking you up? _

_ Nine. _

_ okay, got it. i’ll be there.  _

_ try to convince him to let me drive, lol. _

_ Graham… _

_ yeah? _

_ You didn’t answer my question. _

_ ‘But’ what? _

_ … _

_ i don’t know _

_ she looks...  _

_ familiar. _

_ What do you mean? _

_ nothing.  _

_ pick you and the frenchie up at nine _

_ Graham? _

_ Graham, are you there? _

Julia sighed and slipped her phone into her pocket. She pressed her lips together and rolled the crick out of her neck, setting her homework on her bedside table. It knocked into a ceramic pencil-holder, and she barely managed to steady it before it could tumble from the edge of the table. Her mind buzzed as she changed into a thin flannel shirt, dark blue with thin white stripes, and slipped into jeans thick enough to withstand a walk through the forest. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror--ruffled black hair, dark eyes, a look of apprehension in her eyes she couldn’t shake away--and sighed, knitting her fingers together. 

Maybe she could wait on the porch. The outside hair did a lot to calm her this time of year. She grabbed her headphones and her watch and took the stairs, trying to think of something other than the girl with the red coat, standing far from the celebration, the bow of her lips gliding into a smile.


	3. Point Bisset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julia, Chase, and Graham visit the forest. Julia meets a helpful stranger in the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY UPDATED, sorry for the delay loves!

“Well,” Graham said, “I really hope Crimson doesn’t kill us, because we probably wouldn’t be found for days. You know, just festering out here in the woods.”

“Inspiring,” Chase deadpanned. “I’m so grateful that you drove us here. I’ve never been so grateful in my life.”

“Enough,” Julia sighed, pressing a finger to her temple. “Let’s get out. And please, stop bickering. I don’t want my mom to find out I’m gone.”

Julia winced as she emerged into the cool, clear darkness of an autumn night unpolluted by street lights. The stars that peeked through the trees should have comforted her--she loved astronomy, the study of the heavens and what made them turn--but tonight they seemed, flat, distant, like glass eyes set to watch her in her work. Worse than this feeling, however, was the realization that she had remembered everything but her coat, hanging forlorn on the hook in the coat closet downstairs. She bit the inside of her cheek and shut her eyes as a gale whipped raw against the exposed skin of her hands and face.

“Sorry about all of that, J,” Graham said, smiling sheepishly at her as Chase glowered. “I promise we’ll be out of here quick. You’ve seen me rig lights before, yeah? Nature cams’ll be a piece of cake.”

“Of course,” she said, forcing a smile more for herself than for him.

“Don’t get confident,” Chase said, stepping forward and thrusting a flashlight toward each of them. “And keep your eyes open. We won’t need the cameras if we get a personal sighting of La Femme Rouge.”

“Aye aye,” Graham said, giving a limp, teasing salute. Chase tucked his journal under his arm and was off, lugging a hunter’s camera and the cable that would lash it to a tree. 

“He really leans hard into the French thing, doesn’t he?” Graham murmured, giving Julia a wry, half-cocked smile. Julia smiled back, faintly, and leaned forward to pick up a camera, repeating the instructions Graham had given her in her head. 

“Well, the original settlers who established Pine Creek  _ were _ French,” she said. “And the cryptid was called  _ La Femme Rouge  _ back then, until English settlers took over and the language changed. Technically, he’s the correct one.”

“Oh,” Graham said. “Didn’t know that. Say, where do you want these?”

She directed him, quickly and quietly, to where she wanted the cameras set up. He’d been trusted with three of them on his request--she almost wished she could ask him to do the one she’d offered to set up, but she already felt guilty enough about his free labor for her crackpot theories. She took her own camera and started to walk to the edge of the clearing where they’d parked, scanning for movement in the trees.

Chase was rubbing off on her. Every sound was the movement of a cryptid--every crackle of a twig, every rustle on the forest floor. Point Bisset was more of a small ridge than a point, but the wind had swept the trees raw, and Julia sighed as a pine swiped thick sap onto the leg of her jeans.  _ Great. This pair’s ruined. _

Her flashlight eventually found a tree that looked perfect for sighting--beyond it was darkness, indicating that a clearing of some kind was nearby. The world around her vanished as she worked, hyperfocused on the task at hand--she was proud of herself for her exact recollection of Graham’s instructions, as she activated the camera, as she worked in the darkness with her flashlight balanced on her shoulder. The pale green glowing face of her watch read 10:30. She’d be back earlier than anticipated. 

She stepped back to admire her handiwork and narrowed her eyes. Part of the camera was listing to the side. She felt a cool wind sweep up from below and gritted her teeth, stepping around the tree to tighten the cord. 

The ground gave way underneath her.

She didn’t even have time to scream before the wind was knocked from her, as she realized in a terrible moment that she’d travelled a lot deeper into the forest than she’d anticipated--that the darkness in front of this tree was the dropoff point of Point Bisset. Her ears sang as she tumbled, gaining speed down the slope, as the jutting roots of windswept plants clawed at her, and she shut her eyes as the pitch black of the ground rose to meet her.

And it did not.

Someone swept an arm around her with lightning speed--a strong arm, one that stilled her fall into a spin and pulled her into a warm chest. She blinked, baffled, chest rising and falling like a firing piston in her panic, and clutched at her savior, who brought her slowly into a standing position, supporting her by the elbows.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” said the person who had caught her. Her voice was beautiful, much softer than Julia had expected, and Julia managed to get her breathing under control as the woman brushed short strands of hair from her eyes. Her flashlight had broken--its glow, bathing a nearby rock, fluttered like a broken bird before dying completely. She was left in the darkness with this stranger, and yet she felt peculiarly calm as the shock wore away and she straightened up, readjusting her ( _ shockingly _ intact) glasses with a shaking hand.

“Where--who--” Julia began, sputtering. The girl who had caught her laughed, the sound a soft exhalation of deep relief, and Julia’s cheeks warmed.

“Good,” she said, “I think you’re okay. Bruised, definitely, but okay.”

“I’m so sorry,” Julia said, pulling away and regretting it as the cold set in again. “I’m  _ so  _ sorry. I’m, er, doing a project, and I didn’t see where I was walking, and--”

“Don’t apologize! I’m just glad you’re alright,” the stranger said, touching her shoulder. “You’re lucky that I was walking this way. I don’t hike this part of the forest much anymore.”

“You hike at night?” Julia said, brow furrowing. “Where’s your flashlight?”

“I have great eyesight,” the woman said, with a tone that sounded like a joke Julia didn’t understand. “And I know this forest really well.”

“Oh,” Julia said, uncomprehending. A moment later, her mind caught up to her fall. “Oh! My friends will be looking for me. They must be worried sick--well, Graham would be, at least.”

“Graham?” The woman moved--the wan light of the stars outlined an elegant profile as her head tilted to look up at the ridge above. Her hair was long and unbound, spilling behind her in long curls, and Julia wondered what it would be like to braid before she flushed and buried that thought deep to be reviewed at a much later date.

“He’s my friend,” Julia said, “we came here with another, er, acquaintance from school. Chase.”

“They’re both probably looking for you,” Carmen said, sounding as though she were hesitating for a moment. She turned toward Julia in the dark, stepping toward her and running her hands down Julia’s arms.

“What’s your name, stranger?” she asked. “You’re really cold.”

“J-Julia,” she said, looking down at her feet even though the darkness around them was almost complete. “Julia Argent. And don’t worry, I’ve been… colder.”

“Well,” she said, “Jules, you can call me… Carmen. And I have good news. For one, I can fix the temperature issue.”

Julia barely had time to remove before the woman moved in the darkness and a coat was wrapped around her, warm and thick, heavy, with the feeling of a vintage piece made to last. It smelled of cedar and mist. 

“Oh!” Julia said. “You don’t have to. Really. I’ll be alright.”

“You’ve been through a big shock,” Carmen said. “Consider this a gift. A consolation prize for the fall.”

“Carmen,” Julia said, running her hands along the collar bashfully. “I, ah, can’t thank you enough.”

“Thank me later. Let me lead you to a trail that goes up to the ridge.”

Julia nodded. Carmen began to lead her away, holding her gently by the arm, and then stopped--a twig had snapped behind them, short but distinct. Julia tensed as Carmen turned toward the sound, huffing.

“Don’t worry.  _ No one _ is  _ following us _ ,” she said, in a pointed way that Julia couldn’t decipher. It almost sounded as though she were admonishing whatever had made the sound, and Julia quickly decided she’d misread the situation. This was all very strange.

Carmen continued to lead her, bracing her as they ascended a little-used trail to Point Bisset, small clumps of dirt and pine needles rolling below her feet. It was a hard walk--Carmen stopped her more than once, making her catch her breath, to nurse her bruised chest. As the wind picked up and they reached the top of the ridge, Carmen stopped her one more time, her voice sounding hesitant for the first time.

“Jules,” she said, “I think I should leave you here. I don’t know if your friends would… trust me, exactly.”

“You saved my life,” Julia said, confused. “What would they say that I couldn’t counter with that?”

“Well, I am a random stranger who came out of nowhere and led you up a secret path to the top of the ridge. I’d understand if they were suspicious.”

“But, again, you saved my life. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to them if they’re concerned,” Julia said. “I think they should meet you. You’re my--er, our hero of the night.”

“Trust me on this,” she said, suddenly alert. “I have to go. But I hope I see you again, Jules.”

“Carmen--”

A click.

Light bathed Julia, and she yelped as her irises contracted. She spun to look at Carmen, but the mysterious girl was gone--no trace of her remained on the dirt trail, no sign of her stirred the path that they had travelled on. Goosebumps crawled up Julia’s arms as she turned back to face Chase, who was looking at her with the awe of an explorer discovering a lost civilization in the jungle.

“Julia,” he said, “what are you wearing?”

Julia looked down. Her mouth dried.

She was wearing a long, beautifully preserved vintage red coat.


End file.
